


Incentives

by thedevilchicken



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Antagonism, Enemies to Lovers, Fights, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-05
Updated: 2006-05-05
Packaged: 2018-04-23 12:56:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4877671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freddie is being disruptive at national team training. Olof intends to make him stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incentives

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal on 5 May 2006.

Freddie is a law unto himself, sashaying his way through life with an above-average degree of grace and in his own absolutely inimitable way, yet with all the astonishing subtlety of a football to the groin. He's like a tornado in Dolce & Gabbana, a sort of stylish human train wreck from which no one can quite avert their eyes; Olof knows this, has in fact always known this, and because of it he really shouldn't be surprised right now. But he's honestly not sure if he is or not. 

He's watching him sleep. It's not from any particularly gooey sentimental feeling that he's doing it, more so because it's too damn early to be awake and in the dimmish early-morning light that's let in by the mostly-closed curtains, Freddie is admittedly the most interesting thing in the room. By far, actually, though this room isn't exactly the Tate Modern. He'd get up and close the curtains properly, try to shut out the morning for another half hour or so before he gets to curse colourfully at whichever poor unfortunate staff member is designated to give him his wake-up call, but he's half convinced that moving at all would wake Freddie and that's not exactly riding high in his list of priorities right now. It's not that he's started to get nervous about repercussions and it's not that he thinks he can't handle him; he knows he can, though that particular phrase makes him grimace with the potential of it and the unfortunately quite tried and tested double entendre. But really, most of all, he just doesn't want to have to deal with that smug smile right now. 

So, he watches. He thinks maybe he should try to go back to sleep but with only that half hour left before he has to be up anyway, apparently his traitorous body has decided that sleep is for the weak. He doesn't agree. He's aching in places that he didn't realise he _could_ ache, quite frankly, and when he thinks about how he ended up that way his reaction is annoyingly part blush and part scowl. This wasn't exactly part of the plan. Freddie Ljungberg is _not_ supposed to be lying conspicuously naked in his bed, taking up more space and more of the sheets than anyone his size really should. But there he is. And though Olof's having more than a little trouble sorting out _why_ , he's more than aware of _how_. 

It started on the pitch. The training pitch, that is, a few days ago. Two days into training out there in Germany and already Freddie was making the expected nuisance of himself, carrying on a loud argument just before lunch with practically anyone who'd listen, that carried through into the canteen and back out onto the pitch. But just as Olof was thinking it might've been a good idea to talk to him about it, he shut up and concentrated; that made it almost impossible to see how he'd get him to take his complaints seriously. So he let it slide. 

The next day, he woke to the melodious sound of an argument in the corridor; Freddie had somehow managed to pick a particularly verbal fight with Kim Källström _and_ Andreas Isaksson, judging from the voices he could hear, but by the time he'd pulled himself together enough to get out of bed and out of the room, Kim and Andreas's door was closing and Freddie was nowhere to be seen. Again, he let it slide, mostly because there were still fifteen minutes left before official wake-up and he hadn't been able to find a clean shirt. But it was starting to get to him. 

Then, Freddie and Zlatan proceeded to spend the whole morning on and off kicking a ball _at_ rather than _to_ each other. Everyone else seemed to find it amusing but the fifth time the ball had bounced off the back of Zlatan's shoulder rather than the back of the net, Olof had had enough. It seemed like the two of them had some sort of internal sensor for that, though, because the next thing he knew they'd knocked it off completely and rather than the knock-down drag-out fight he'd been half expecting - which could've been entertaining in a slightly perverse way considering their respective heights - Zlatan wandered off to the dressing room with Henke and Freddie started up a truly insane group game of keepy-uppy with half the rest of the squad. Olof actually spent the evening wondering if _he_ was the one with the problem. Maybe he was unconsciously allowing their little seasons-ago not-quite-punch-up to cloud his judgement in a way the papers would find entertaining. So he let it go. The last thing he needed was Freddie fighting back from the moral high ground. 

But then the first thing Freddie did the next morning was lock Markus out of his room wearing just a rather skimpy towel - Olof had to admit that he must've done something fairly ingenious to get Markus out of that room in that towel to begin with - and that was it. Someone had to talk to him about all this before it got out of control. 

He chose the afternoon, and he expected an argument. He was actually expecting something approaching a repeat performance of their previous shoving match but he'd come to the conclusion that if he didn't rise to the bait then there'd be nothing to worry about and even if he did, better they just give everyone a continuation of what he was _still_ being questioned about in interviews rather than a brand new campaign of We Hate Freddie Ljungberg. Strangely enough, an argument wasn't quite what he got. 

Freddie was lying on the grass with one knee bent and the other leg stretched out, foot resting on a ball. He was just sprawling there, shorts too low and shirt too high and a couple of inches of bare skin showing there above his waistband, under which his thumb was tucked. And somehow, in that position, the other hand tucked behind his head, he was managing to keep up a conversation with both Zlatan and Henke who were sitting a few feet away. 

"Freddie." 

He turned his head away from Zlatan, who was sitting there shirtless and lounging expansively, entirely inelegant, and looked up at Olof. "Yes?"

"I need to have a word." Freddie just raised his eyebrows expectantly. Olof frowned. "In private." 

And then he moved. He rolled the ball from under his ankle and flicked it up in Olof's general direction - he really had to reach to catch it - and then stretched and sat up. Then he pulled himself up onto his knees and sat back on his calves for a moment. That was when he knew they weren't going to argue, as Freddie looked up at him and the smile drifted from his face. Because if he'd had hair then Olof would've yanked him up by it. And Freddie would've let him. 

He held out his hand and Freddie took him by the wrist; he pulled him up and he tossed the ball down to Henke who was already back in conversation with Zlatan. He had a feeling they weren't going to be missed. And they walked away together, inside, into the dressing room, the both of them curiously quiet. Olof closed the door behind them. They just stood there in the middle of the space and looked at each other. 

"You might want to hit me," Freddie said, walking away to lounge against a wall. Olof frowned, jamming his nails into his palms. "It'll make you feel better."

"I'm not going to hit you, Freddie," he said. But he didn't exactly sound convinced, even to himself. 

Freddie shrugged. "Pity," he said, and he looked away, around the room, over everyone's kitbags and the benches and floor liberally strewn with clothing. "So, what did you want to talk about?" He said it like he might actually have cared but he said it as he was sitting himself down on a bench opposite Olof, pulling up one leg and settling the ankle at the other knee, drumming his fingers against his shinpad. He didn't _look_ like he cared. "No, let me guess. Should be easy enough. You want me to settle down and play nice."

The way Freddie said it made it sound like something awful, but Olof nodded faintly anyway. "Something like that," he said, and put his hands on his hips like maybe this emphasised his point and didn't just make him look faintly idiotic.

"You don't think that might be asking too much, do you?"

"From you?" He paused, frowned a little harder. "Maybe."

"Then maybe you should offer me an incentive." Olof did _not_ like where this was going. "C'mon, you can make it worth my while."

Olof raised one hand to rub at his temples. "Let me get this straight. You want an incentive to act the way the rest of the lads do anyway?"

Freddie rested his head back against the wall and nodded. "Why not?"

"Because that's not the way it works."

"Spoilsport."

For a long moment Freddie just sat there and Olof just looked at him as if this hadn't been his idea in the first place and he wasn't supposed to be doing some sort of persuasion job here. The problem was that he'd expected more of a fight, possibly an actual _fight_ -type fight if things went particularly badly, and this really wasn't a contingency that he'd planned for. In fact, when he thought about it, he hadn't really planned at all. But fortunately, at least maybe fortunately, Freddie moved. 

He picked himself up and he crossed the room and he pushed him; Olof's first instinct was to push right back, harder, but he told himself that was exactly what he _wasn't_ going to do and so he didn't do it. He let himself be pushed and all the time he was too busy stoically chanting 'passive resistance, passive resistance' somewhere inside his head to notice that he really was pushing, not shoving. Before he knew it, his back was up against the door. And Freddie was holding him there with two splayed hands pressed firmly to his chest. 

"I remember you being more aggressive," he said, almost smiling. Almost. And Olof really wanted to wipe that smirk off his face, but tempted as he was, he kept himself from it. 

Then Freddie sank to his knees. He did it slowly, honest-to-God _sinking_ like he’d stepped into quicksand, his hands sliding down the door to either side of him with an obscene sort of squeaky squeal. He knelt there and he looked up and Olof knew, _knew_ , that he was just trying to get a rise out of him, and the double entendre was probably terribly apt. So he did nothing. He didn't move, didn't speak, and ideally he wouldn't even have looked at him but he just didn't and doesn't have the kind of self-discipline that would've taken. But he didn't even move when Freddie played with the drawstrings at the front of his shorts. He didn't move when he tugged up the front of his shirt a little, fingers brushing idly at his skin in a sort of nonsense pattern that Olof soon realised, with a groan and a roll of his eyes, wasn't nonsense but spelled out Freddie's name. He didn't move as Freddie leant in and licked - _licked_ \- at his belly. Somehow he didn't even flinch. And Freddie pulled back, letting go of Olof's shirt. 

"You're no fun," he said, looking about as far from amused as Olof did. Then, suddenly, he smiled, and Olof got the distinct impression that that didn't exactly bode well. And he was right because the next thing he knew his shorts were down around his thighs, his underwear had followed, and then Freddie was close enough that he could feel his breath rather hot against a rather sensitive area.

"You wouldn't dare," Olof said, not quite managing to sound incredulous. But he really should've known better because Freddie's response to that was to put his mouth on him. Apparently he did dare. 

So, he sucked him off in the dressing room and the one clear thought that entered Olof's head, far from 'maybe I should stop this' or 'I shouldn't've let it get this far' or anything even remotely sensible was, in fact, something more along the lines of 'I'm glad he pushed me up against the door so no one can walk in.' At that point, with that thought, watching Freddie do what he was doing, he started to seriously question his priorities. 

That's how it started. Freddie gargled with Lucozade and complained about his knees then jogged back out onto the training pitch and Olof just took a seat on the bench, wondering what the hell had just happened exactly. It took a while for him to gather himself and short of 'Freddie just blew you, idiot,' he mustered up a grand total of zero real answers. And, of course, that doesn't explain how Freddie ended up here, in this bed, half-naked and sleeping. 

The next day, Freddie's behaviour actually improved; there were no arguments, no mostly-naked Markus stranded cursing in the corridor, no petty let's-injure-ourselves-before-the-competition-even-starts games with Zlatan. The only problem was that far from seeming like a good thing, it just made Olof suspicious. It made him more suspicious as the day went on and lunch passed without incident. He made him positively paranoid when the afternoon went by and Freddie was actually _quiet_. And it wasn't just him - the coaches seemed sort of bemused and Erik actually jogged over at one point to ask him what the fuck was wrong with Freddie. Olof said he didn't know. He actually didn't, and that was sort of disturbing. 

Then again, it turned out he was paranoid with good reason because almost as soon as he set foot in the showers after training, he felt a pair of arms slip around his waist. Palms settled over his abdomen, a little too low for comfort. If 'comfort' was actually a term he could apply when approached naked in the showers. Still, once the initial, momentary, racing-heart shock wore off under the hot water, he didn't have to ask who it was. 

"Freddie..." he said, frowning, almost sighing. 

"Mmm, yes?"

"I realise this is a stupid question but what exactly are you doing?"

Freddie stepped a little closer, his chest brushing against Olof's back. "I would've thought that was obvious." Irritatingly, he could almost hear the smirk in his voice. 

"I mean what are you doing _here_?"

Then he turned Olof a little, stepped around so they were facing each other, their sides to the spray. "You know, I would've thought that was obvious, too."

"Indulge me."

Freddie stepped back, leaning against the tiled wall of the shower stall, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked at him, brazenly, not quite smirking, like he was daring him to cover up. Olof didn't, he just crossed his arms over his chest exactly as Freddie had. 

"Haven't I been good?" he asked, with a tilt of his head. 

Grudgingly, Olof nodded. "Apparently."

"So don't I get a reward?"

Olof let his head drop back against the tiles with a dull thud that hurt a little more than he'd actually intended. "You can't be serious."

"I can't?"

"No, you can't."

"But I am."

"But you _can't_ be."

Freddie apparently gave up on that line of conversation at that point, and quite sensibly so because Olof was prepared to go quite some way with an increasingly petty line in 'oh yes I can,' 'oh no you can't.' Though his relief was somewhat short-lived; Freddie stepped forward, looking up at him with a vaguely amused smile as he settled his hands at Olof's waist. 

"I'm not going to sleep with you just because you didn't act like a moron all day," Olof said, then took a moment to think about this and decided that yes, it was exactly what he meant. "You might've noticed how everyone else acts civilly without being promised sexual favours."

"I'm not asking for favours."

"But you're asking for sex."

"And I'm not asking for sex."

"But you..."

And that would be roughly the time that Freddie's hand snaked down from Olof's waist and found his cock. Whatever that sentence might've been intended to say didn't really seem to matter anymore because within about three seconds, Olof was barely even aware that he had the capacity for speech, let alone the fact that he'd been speaking. And it was over remarkably quickly, considering the fact that Olof hadn't thought he was particularly interested. Freddie just slipped into the next stall and left him wondering vaguely why he hadn't just said no. Or indeed said anything at all.

Freddie sat with him at dinner. Deliberately. He actually asked for the seat, requested it from a rather wary Kim who seemed to shuffle aside just to sidle out of the way of Freddie's potential wrath. And then he proceeded to ignore Olof completely, which was equal parts bemusing and absolutely fine because Olof had very little to say to him anyway. It must have been somewhat odd for the unfortunate people around them, though, even if they hadn't reached the level of 'Erik, tell Freddie to pass the salt' - they did, however, manage to spend almost an hour sitting next to each other without once acknowledging each other's presence in any way whatsoever. Olof was almost impressed, or would've been if he'd been able to kick himself out of cursing himself for the incredible immaturity of it all.

They all stuck around for a while after dinner, Freddie hanging around at the other side of the room playing a never-ending game of cards and losing badly but with disturbingly uncharacteristic grace as he finally looked at Olof for the first time in an hour and a half. After that he shot him the occasional glance, the occasional smile as he chewed gum and kept on obviously, _obviously_ , checking out Kim's cards. Olof couldn't keep from smiling and covered his almost-laugh with an understated but thoroughly theatrical coughing fit. Until they all started to filter out and up to their rooms. 

And Freddie pulled him aside as he was leaving. He couldn't say he wasn't expecting it. 

"Invite me up to your room," Freddie told him, pulling him aside as the last few wandered on out and headed for the elevators.

"Why would I do that?"

"Because I want you to."

He raised his eyebrows. "And that's the best reason you can come up with?"

Freddie shrugged. Then he smiled vaguely. "How about," he said, just lounging there against the wall, "'it wouldn't be the first time'?"

And that was it. That was the moment. Because Olof couldn't argue with that logic no matter how much he might've wanted to, not while something was breaking in his head and every memory he'd been hoping Freddie wouldn't invoke came spilling on out. Fighting on the pitch and fucking in the dressing room after it. Freddie's room after that. Showers after training, showers after a match. Showers after match _es_. Gothenburg and Stockholm. Portugal. London and Birmingham. Freddie's place. His. And four months without anything like this, four months of putting it out of his head and not really talking, of getting injured and seeing his team suck with a powerful might while Freddie's went into the finals of the Champions League. Four months without Freddie to irritate him into bed. It wasn't that he'd been trying to forget, he just hadn't been trying hard to remember. 

He didn't answer right away. He stood back and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked at him. He _looked_ at him. Freddie wasn't smiling anymore and Olof guessed that was because he knew what he'd done without Olof needing to say a word, before Olof even moved. And he did move then, fast and hard and not quite deliberate, pushing at him, mouth meeting his as he pressed in tight against him. He doesn't usually think about the first time and the debacle that was but he did then, about the awkwardness there’d been not just in him but in Freddie, how both of them had been taken off guard and stepped back afterwards looking like they had no idea where the fuck it'd come from. He thought about it because it'd been different since then, in a way. Years tend to do that. But there was never really any tenderness in it, there's always been just this. He bit down hard on Freddie's lower lip, made him yelp, and pulled back. 

"Come up to my room," he said. Then he turned and walked away, down toward the elevators. Freddie followed. And that, he thinks, is how they ended up here. He really shouldn't be surprised.

Freddie mumbles something and shifts, takes a couple of minutes of sporadic wincing and muttering and then opens one eye. He smiles and moves, pulls himself closer under the sheets, kisses Olof anything but quickly. 

"Mmm, morning," he says, his voice sort of early-morning ragged. Then nuzzles Olof's neck, and then he stretches hugely, yawns, reopens one eye and it looks oddly like he's winking. "You know, I was dreaming about you."

Olof quirks his brows, amused. "Oh?"

Freddie nods, his eye closing again as he reaches back to the headboard and stretches again, languidly. "Yeah. You were standing at the far side of the pitch at Highbury, telling me to straighten up and fly right in semaphore. With the linesmen's flags."

Olof smirks and shakes his head as he turns onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow. "You know semaphore?"

Freddie shrugs and smiles faintly. "There's a lot you don't know about me," he says, and Olof has to agree. He decides it's probably best that he doesn't point out that there's rather a lot that he _does_ know, too. 

They lie there a while longer, Freddie's eyes closed but Olof knows he's awake, unless he's recently developed a stunning ability to drum his fingers not quite irritatingly over Olof's collarbone in his sleep. This is the sort of time when it's actually sort of pleasant to be around Freddie, when he's not quite awake enough to be annoying on purpose, when he's quiet for once, not quite affectionate but usually seems happy to see him. Happy enough to lie there with him and not make a fuss, at least - happy enough just to lie there and a touch is just a touch with no real intention to it. Olof thinks he might actually like him at times like this, though he's not sure what it is that he likes; he's never really tried to decide if this is Freddie without pretences or if it's just too early for the rest of his character to really kick in yet. He's not sure it really matters. 

Then the phone rings and Freddie's eyes open; this is officially the end of it. Freddie reaches over to the bedside table and he picks up the phone like it's perfectly natural for him to be in Olof's room first thing in the morning. He sounds remarkably chipper to say it's so damn early, too. Then he hangs up and he flings back the sheets in a way that'd seem a bit melodramatic for anyone else. He gets up. He finds his clothes and he dresses, occasionally smiling this little smirk-smile over at Olof because Olof's not even pretending that he's not watching. It's early; his shame doesn't usually kick in until eleven at least.

"Don't get comfortable here on your own," Freddie says as he pulls on his shirt. "You're not getting rid of me, you know. I'll be back tonight."

Olof rolls his eyes theatrically and just about refrains from making any snide remarks about Austrian bodybuilders. But he does haul himself out of bed and pulls on the lower half of a tracksuit that he's not even sure is his as he decides there's probably nothing he can say just not that's sarcastic enough but won't actually piss Freddie off to high heaven. The problem is that he doesn't actually hate him. As much as the Swedish press might want to believe there's something of that sort between them, he really doesn't hate him. But that doesn't mean he has to like him all that much, either. 

They don't get along and they never really have as such, not that that's in any way surprising since half their national team thinks Freddie's some kind of occasional arrogant prima donna. They don't _say_ it, of course, but it's always there, an undercurrent behind the smiles and the on/off sideways glances that make Olof glad he's the captain and not one of the majority of the rest of the lads. And the strange thing is that they don't really hate Freddie either - not even Zlatan actually _hates_ him and it's common knowledge that the two of them don't exactly see eye to eye. Freddie's a likeable guy, he's just also a conceited ass at times. Unfortunately, he can't help it, and he doesn't seem to particularly want to. It's just who he is. But Olof knows something they don't know.

It's just that, well... Freddie's eyes aren't as blue as they are in the pictures. They're blue, of course, but not quite that shade of fuck-me azure that apparently helps to shift glossy magazines and Calvin Klein unmentionables. And he doesn't actually _wear_ Calvin Klein, for all his designer sensibilities, at least not right now, post-dozing in some German hotel room. The thing is that no one notices all this in the daytime because Freddie's cheerful, highly obnoxious bravado establishes itself rather firmly and all you'll see is Freddie Ljungberg, That Guy From Those Billboards. He's never just A Guy the way Olof knows him at times like these, the way he knows Freddie likes him to from time to time though he’d never admit it and Olof would never really want him to. Maybe that's why this keeps on happening - because Olof's the only one that isn't remotely impressed. 

And once he's through that door, it'll be back just the way it was. So he thinks he'll steal him away for just a moment longer.

"Hey." 

Freddie pauses as he's stepping into his trainers, glances at him as he frowns at his tracksuit because the legs seem to be just a bit too long. "Hmm?"

Olof glances between the trousers he's wearing and Freddie's and it wouldn't exactly take a genius to figure out the problem. Still, neither of them actually seem to care; Olof just has to tug them down a little lower over his hips so they're not up around his ankles and Freddie snickers to himself because obviously he can tell that Olof's showing a bit more skin than he usually likes to. Then Olof beckons, crooking one finger at him, and Freddie actually takes a step forward before he thinks about it. His guard's down, or it was. He stops. 

"What?" he asks, narrowing his oh-so-blue eyes, now clearly suspicious. 

Then Olof just steps forward and pauses for a second, looking at him. But the pause doesn't last long before he closes the distance between them, pulls him close, wraps his arms around him and Freddie struggles or tries to or at least means to try. As it is, he just ends up with his fingers tugging at the rather low waist of the sweats that aren't his, gripping tight as he's held there. He looks up and he is the perfect picture of confusion and frustration, like he can't decide whether he's supposed to pull away now or if this is in the handbook somewhere, that Freddie would've skipped had there been one. And the cynic in Olof wants to say that if Arsenal had one then it'd all be written in French anyway. 

Then he sighs dramatically and drops his head down onto Olof's shoulder. Hard. Heavily. So abruptly it hurts and Olof curses under his breath then feels Freddie smile against his neck as he slips his arms around his waist. It's sort of pleasant. It’s definitely unusual.

"If you tell anyone about this, I'll make your job hell," Freddie murmurs, though the tone says something else. He's still smiling. His hands have settled at the small of Olof's bare back. 

"Freddie, you do that anyway," he says. 

It doesn't last. It doesn't and it couldn't, and if they're honest then neither of them would really want it to. But he allows Freddie the small reward of being the first to pull away, fingernails scratching lightly over his back as he does so. 

"Behave yourself," he says, putting on his best captainly voice but his hands are resting at his hips above those sweats that don't quite fit because they’re meant for someone shorter.

Freddie smiles almost wickedly, and Olof groans as Freddie opens the door. "You'd be bored if I did," he says, and then he's gone. 

The irony is, he's right and Olof knows it. He's not a saint - he's quite firmly a sinner - and Olof's quite obviously a card-carrying masochist because he wouldn't have him any other way.


End file.
